Election day! (First One Anyway): Some Readings

Election day in Egypt at last! Details in the next post, but here's a Reader's Digest of useful commentary, blogging, and thinktanking. Not at all comprehensive (that's Google's job) but things I thought worth linking to:

• Margaret Litvin,  Send Down the Basket, "What Went Wrong?"

• Sarah Carr, who's an Egyptian citizen, Inanities, "November 19."

•  Dalia Malek, an Egyptian Abroad, at The Arabist, "What Does Religion Have to Do with Voting in Egypt?"

• Ursula Lindsey, The Daily Beast, "Corrupt and Brutal, the Egyptian Police Fight for their Survival."

• Amnesty International, "Egyptian Military have 'Crushed' Hopes of 25 January Protesters."

• Some have said I was too harsh about the electoral system. But consider Michele Dunne (no kin), of the Atlantic Council, "Fine Points of the Electoral System That Might Make a Difference."

• Michele again: "Electoral Propaganda." Her best line by far:

The logo along the bottom of the ad shows the silhouette of a mosque, church, skyscraper, pyramids, the Zamalek tower, and sailboats—with an army tank nestled comfortably in the middle.  Had I been consulted on the logo, I would have advised against having the tank’s gun turret aimed directly at the church.

Michele fairly recently left Carnegie in DC for the Atlantic Council, as head of their new Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. Their EgyptSource page looks like the new go-to during the elections. I feel that when she left Carnegie she sort of took Egypt with her (though Nathan Brown is still in there on legal and constitutional issues), especially since Carnegie's Beirut operation lost Amr Hamzawy (at least for the duration of the elections) to Egyptian politics.